Essay:Hillary's inner Goldwater-girl

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A look at Hillary Clinton's fundamental conservativismand her relationship with the conservative movement.

Much has been said about the conservative movement's loathing of Hillary Clinton. Much of the narrative spin has been written by Clinton clones. This has led to frustration within the conservative movement, a feeling their side of the tale has been distorted or not heard at all. Conservative animosity toward Hillary Clinton is based more upon a feeling of betrayal and less upon differences.

What has the conservative movement amazed, amused, and envious for many years now is, how Hillary Clinton has bamboozled and hoodwinked a large portion of liberals and progressives into thinking she's a success story of one of their own. But conservatives know her all to well, her duplicity, amorality, and scheming. Trust me, she's one of us.

Nixon and Martin Luther King were friends.[1] King was a Republican. Nixon was a traditional Vice President, outside the loop in day to day decision making (the mode of modern Vice Presidents as hands on trusted managers and advisers begins with Mondale, with Dan Quayle and Al Gore being the exceptions). The Republicans had supported the federal anti-lynching bill before Congress since 1927, which FDR always opposed.[note 1] The New Deal coalition consisted of Northeastern liberals and Southern Democrats, and despite overtures and inroads to the African-American vote by FDR and his wife Eleanor, black loyalty to the Democratic party by the 1960 Kennedy/Nixon contest still was not what it is today. Liberal New Dealers were always careful not to alienate racist Southern Democrats.

Phyllis Schlafly, who was to play a big role in promoting Barry Goldwater in 1964, at the 1960 Republican convention led a revolt of 'moral conservatives' who opposed "Richard Nixon's stance against segregation and discrimination", according to Wikipedia and the New York Times.[2]

King did not know the Kennedys. Two weeks before the 1960 presidential election King was sitting in jail in Atlanta after an arrest on some trumped up charges in a non-violent protest. Nixon didn't have the pull in the administration some people would imagine and was unable to do anything about it. John Kennedy, against his brother Bobby's wishes, intervened on King's behalf two weeks before the November general election. Bobby and other campaign advisers feared alienating the Southern white racist vote, as FDR and the New Dealers before always feared.[3] But the risk paid off. King was released from jail and publicly thanked Kennedy. The die was cast: Afro-Americans became a solid voting bloc within the Democratic party ever since.
[4]

Four years later conservative Republican Barry Goldwater was nominated to face Lyndon Johnson who amazingly pushed through civil rights legislation languishing before Congress for more than 100 years after the Emancipation Proclaimation. Jack Kennedy and Franklin Roosevelt never dared to attempt what Johnson was able to accomplish. The day before Kennedy's assassination Nixon held a press conference in Dallas critical of Kennedy's failure to move on civil rights legislation. Said Nixon, "Despite the fact that President Kennedy has one of the largest majorities in Congress of any president in history, it’s one of the poorest percentage records of accomplishment in history.”

Goldwater's nomination marked both an idealogical and geographical shift in the Republican party from eastern moderate-liberal appeasers and compromisers to a western conservative populist prairie fire.[5] Minority rights were not the big issue in the electorates mind: war and peace, and nuclear holocaust dominated.

No, Hillary Clinton is not who Nixon had in mind as one of the "stripped-pants faggots" in the State Department.[6] Nixon probably was referring to Guy Burgess who caused Dean Acheson quite some embarassment.[7] But Nixon's memory was faulty, it was a striped-suit jacket.

This was in the wake of the Cuban missile crisis and the burning monk[8] on the streets of Saigon which horrified American newspaper readers fairly new to, and uncomfortable with, their role as the world's 'policeman'.

Divisions within the Republican party, and its weakened eastern establishment represented by Nelson Rockefeller, led to offerring up Barry Goldwater in a ritual of human sacrifice. Few kamikaze candidates have embarked upon an impossible task with as much fervor as Goldwater did, determined to make a statement about the condition of society and America's place as a great world leader. His slogan was, "In your heart you know he's right".

[Hillary] was the Republican director during a school-wide mock election...There was a debate...The issues were centralization in government, US policy in Vietnam, and US nuclear policy... With Rodham's help, Goldwater won the mock election.[9]

We don't see "civil rights" as a debate topic, we do see "centralization in government" - a codeword for discussing states rights.

The bill lying before Congress, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, offered Goldwater an opportumity no Republican had since the Civil War and Reconstruction : to break the stronghold Democrats had on the 'Solid South'. In hindsight, Hillary Clinton and conservatives will say Goldwater was willing to throw morality to the wind if it meant he could carry a few states at all, which he did in the South.

The bill itself never could have become law without Republicans voting for it, so strong was Democratic opposition to it. But nominating as their Presidential standardbearer a candidate who voted against their own party leadership and a national consensus was one of the most disasterous errors an organized American political party has made in history. It solidified the gains John Kennedy won among black voters four years earlier.

The "self-hating Jew" Bernie Sanders criticizes Hillary Clinton's relationship with a Rasputin-type figure associated with the Nixon administration, Henry Kissinger, while Hillary boasts Henry Kissinger praises her for running the State Department "the most effective way I've ever seen."[10] Kissinger didn't have the friends in the US Justice Department to watch his back in the conduct of foreign policy that Hillary has.[note 2] Kissinger's praise evidently is a reference to her ability to conduct diplomacy while skirting the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and guarding secrecy. It was Kissinger, afterall, who urged Nixon to do something about the Pentagon Papers leak. And the FOIA was a post-Watergate reform passed after Kissinger and Nixon's departure because of their obsession with secrecy.

Who is Henry Kissinger? Kissinger is an academic who came to fame resurrecting and rehabilitating the reputation of a notorious right-wing diplomat responsible for a period of time known as the Restoration, or the Restoration of the Monarchy, or the Restoration of the House of Bourbon in France after the quasi-democratic/socialist uprising in Paris resulting in the execution of Maria Antoinette and the chaotic Napoleanic Wars that exported the ideas of the French Revolution across European borders threatening the established ruling order and social system everywhere. After Napolean's Waterloo, a right-wing conservative reaction led by Prince Metternich redrew the map of Europe allowing a few Superpowers (Hapsburg, Bourbon, Romanov, Hohenzollern, and Whettin) to divide and rule in various spheres of influence[note 3]. Imperialist repression was the rule for the coming decades and revolutionary ideas like "Liberty, Fraternity, Equality" had to wait for another day.

Test firing of a tactical nuclear weapon. Limited nuclear war was a strategy developed by the Democrats. Johnson's "Daisy Girl" ad in 1964 depicting a little girl incinerated by a hydrogen bomb was a bit of an exaggeration of what Goldwater proposed and Hillary debated with her classmates. And both were advocating the Democrats' own nuclear doctrine.[note 4]

Metternich is Kissinger's hero because he restored peace, order, and stability to a world with an uncertain future. Nixon first became familiar with Kissinger after reading Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy published in 1957 (by Frederick A. Praeger Press[11]) while he was vice president.[12] The two shared a view of "limited nuclear war" which differed from the Eisenhower's policy of "massive retaliation".[note 5] Nixon did not have influence within the Eisenhower administration to affect policy, but as president brought Kissinger on board as his chief National Security Adviser in 1969 (indeed, the position of National Security Adviser within the White House was little known at the time. Kissinger cut the mold by which its power and influence on the president and within the White House has been known ever since.[note 6]

Kissinger and Nixon are very much the architects of the modern age. Metternich had constructed an international order which kept the peace (moreless) for nearly 100 years, from 1815 to the outbreak of World War I in 1914. By contrast, the idiots who crafted the Treaty of Versailles established a peace structure lasting only 20 years, from 1919 to 1939 when Hitler ignited another worldwide conflagration. When World War II ended in 1945, there was no forward looking peace treaty in the traditional sense. Only the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal concerned with past events. Some may say the United Nations Charter was set up to maintain international peace, but within 5 years the UN was at war with one of its chief signatories - the Soviet Union - who was also a permanent member of the Security Council. Such was the esteem Stalin held for FDR's grand vision for world peace. By 1968 Nixon wanted to end the series of unwinnable wars with the communist bloc (Russia & China) that the United States kept getting involved in (as in Korea and Vietnam).[note 7] With Metternich as his model, Kissinger showed the way.[note 8]

The Helsinki Accords of 1975, negotiated during Kissinger's tenure as Secretary of State - 30 years after the end of World War II - is the closest thing resembling a formal peace treaty after WWII. Russia and China are now trading partners with the US, and the risks of war with Russia or China must be weighed against the economic interdependence all parties have developed. Thank Nixon, and Kissinger, for the global prosperity we've sustained without global nuclear confrontation for nearly five decades.

The logic of imagining Hillary went from being Goldwater girl to Rockefeller Republican to avoid Nixon is like asking us to believe ultraconservative Ted Cruz supporters embraced the RINODonald Trump because the centrist John Kasich and his supporters were racists.

Nixon, like Johnson in 1964, ran as a peace candidate, his slogan being, Peace With Honor. And the evidence points to Hillary being a Nixon supporter well into his first term up until the time she met her future husband, despite the revisionism and contortions she and Clinton appologists have offered to establish leftist and liberal bona fidas, as if she had left the GOP over some ideological or moral principle. Personal relationships and opportunism guided her every step.

By the Spring primaries of 1968 (coinciding with the Prague Spring[note 10]), Vietnam was wholly the Democrats' baby. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was the WMD of that day, cooked up by an administration and Congress eager to feed the "flower of the nation"[note 11] to the military industrial complex.[15] Vietnam was little more than a stimulus program to reduce unemployment.[note 12] Pacifists and isolationists on the far-left of the Democratic party began protesting their own war. Purple patriots of both parties, neither pacifist blue nor communist red, fell into line and supported another Democrat foreign war as they had in World War I, World War II, and Korea.

Nixon meets a haggard Johnson in the White House to discuss Vietnam after Humphrey's nomination at the tumultuous Democratic convention. The electoral landslides both presidents enjoyed, Johnson in '64 & Nixon in '72, were made up roughly of the same Silent Majority voters.The two were good friends and alike in many ways. Nixon was angry about attacks on Johnson's character and policies after Johnson left office. Bill Clinton was inspired by rumors Johnson had sex in the Oval Office.

Democrats were divided 3 ways: old fashioned New Dealers opposing their pampered and spoiled baby boomer children in a 'generation gap', against the Southern redneck and racist "Law and Order" platform of Alabama Gov. George Wallace. The Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey had an odd coalition of hardcore New Deal regular Democrats, basically labor unions, and a few anti-war pot smoking hippies who became George McGovern's core constituents in 1972. But even then Nixon was eating away at the great New Deal base when he won the backing of Jimmy Hoffa's Teamsters Union.

Nixon, despite his plurality, became the face of America. The racist vote went to Gov. Wallace. Nixon reflected the feelings of a generation, reared in the adversity of the Great Depression, victorious over fascism, only to see their country wracked by divisions in more prosperous times with the constant threat of nuclear war hanging over them. In a drunken delirium on the eve of his resignation, speaking to a portrait of Jack Kennedy who likewise had his presidency cut short, Nixon said, "When the American people look at you they see what they want to be. When they see me they see who they really are," flaws and all.

As it turned out, the Gulf of Tonkin fraud perpetrated upon the American people by the Democrats was exposed in the Pentagon Papers on Richard Nixon's watch. In a typical patriotic Republican knee jerk reaction, Nixon tried to coverup his Democratic predecessor's mistakes and guard public opinion from going against the war the Democrats started. He created the plumbers unit to fix government leaks after J. Edgar Hoover told him there was very little the FBI could do legally to fight internal policy subversion.

Meanwhile Hillary Clinton took up with her lesbian roommate, the grand daughter of former Secretary of State Dean Acheson, who likely told Hillary the name 'Acheson',[note 14] was blamed by 54,000 American families as responsible for the deaths of their sons in the Korean War.[19][20] It was not a time to become a Democrat. Longtime traditional Democrats were becoming more and more disillussioned with the Democratic party daily. Hillary had been elected class president at a top liberal, Ivy League college - while still a Republican. Hillary would have us believe she swam against the tide based upon inventions out of whole cloth to slander the GOP as racist two and half decades later. It should be noted here, recent scholarship has now exonerated the name Acheson for incompetence in diplomacy in the months leading up to the Korean war.

One third of all Democrats - New Dealers and Southern whites - ultimately joined with traditional Republicans to form the Silent Majority, handing Nixon a bigger victory in 1972 than Johnson scored against Goldwater in '64, Ike scored against Stevenson (twice) in the '50s, or FDR scored against Alf Landon in 1936. All within living memory of many voters. It was very much the same coalition of centrists that voted to 'Bury Goldwater' that voted to bury McGovern. The pot smoking, limp wristed, blame America extremists represented by Hillary's boyfriend and her Wellsley classmates went down in smoke and flames. But somehow Bill and Hillary Clinton saw the future: inspired by Gov. George Wallace and his wife Lurleen; when Wallace was term-limited out, his wife took his place.

It should be noted, in the pre-Roe v. Wade days McGovern opposed abortion and vehemently tried to distance himself from supporters who held what was considered an extreme leftist position in 1972. When campaign consultants and advisers attempted to organize groups of young, attractive women and girls along the line of Goldwater-girls, McGovern nixed the idea thinking it was a sexist exploitation of women.[21] McGovern was a parish pastor for a brief time and earned the nickname as the Preacher Politician. [22] His speeches resembled sermons and his moralizing style was inspired by an earlier populist Midwest Plainsman, 3-time Democratic presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan.

The 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling coupled with the 1962 ruling banning school prayer was another galvinizing factor among social conservatives and Christian fundamentalists, many of which were traditional Democratic voters based on economic self interest. This was particularly true among Southern Democrat Bible-belt voters.

The feeling among many Southern Bible-belt voters was one of betrayal - that the Democratic party had been taken over by the New Left.[note 15] Even Jimmy Carter whom they enthusiastically supported as a Christian candidate just two years prior, to their amazement had no intention to confront or rollback the social engineering of New Left radicals, whom they considered to have hijacked the Democratic party and were leading the country down the path of social experimentation.

Roe v. Wade was considered a victory for feminists, the school prayer ban a victory for atheists. As to racial politics, affirmative action was born out of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, and seemed to go beyond a mere guarantee of equality and non-discrimination. The big spending welfare state trickled down to mean slower job growth and poorer overall economic performance. Just four years after the Republican party was on life-support in the wake of Richard Nixon's resignation, the party staged a dramatic comeback at all levels, state and federal. All this accrued to the advantage of the aged Ronald Reagan, waiting patiently in the wings. But the marriage between tax-cutters and anti-abortionists wasn't complete yet. Things were to get worse for the Democrats, and the nation, before they got better.[note 16][23]

The Republican Party - the Party of the Union, the party that saved the Union, can never outbid the Democratic party in social spending and government handouts. Yet it is forced to confront these issues every election. Its focus has always been on national security, national defense, and the nation's ability to meet the competing costs of social spending and defense spending. Time and again Republican presidents have had to pay lip service or forge compromises to continue their budgetary, defense or foreign policy agendas. Nixon created the Earned Income Credit.[24] Reagan passed the Martin Luther King holiday - something the Democrats when they controlled both Houses of Congress and the White House under Carter were too paralyzed by internal strife to accomplish. Baby Bush agreed to a minimum wage hike in order to get Congress to pay the salaries of the troops in Iraq.

Conservative women have always been in the forefront of the women's rights movement. By the mid 1990s while preparing for her husbands reelection bid Hillary told NPR,

I don't recognize this new brand of Republicanism that's afoot now which I consider to be very reactionary, not conservative in many respects. I'm very proud that I was a 'Goldwater Girl';[25]

Goldwater himself was making similiar comments about social conservatives :

...these moneymaking ventures by fellows like Pat Robertson and others are trying to take the Republican Party away from the Republican Party.[26]

She had not moved much from Goldwater's position in 1964 when she debated fellow high-school students that getting involved in a protracted conventional ground war in Vietnam was probably a big mistake. But the "peace candidate" won and the tuff-talking warmonger was burried.[27] After 30 years Hillary and Goldwater's views were unchanged.[note 17]

By 1972 Hillary hooked up with her hippie boyfriend to manage George McGovern's Texas campaign, so feeble and pathetic was the national Democratic coalition they had to hire an inexperienced 20-something import from neighboring Arkansas, who didn't know anything about the state, to handle the second largest electoral prize in the Union. Hillary's gambit with the insurgents paid off : within ten years, when the DNC took steps to insure an insurgency could not happen again, her role in the Superdelegate hierarchy was secure. Even the Republican party as late as 2016 did not offer this kind of privelege, power, status, and prestige to its most loyal and dedicated members.

Begging the reader's pardon momentarily, we're going to indulge in some vulgar stereotypes: it's not surprising a woman who made political science a career choice, in her early years focused on children's issues.

Republicans tend to shy away from social issues ever since Reconstruction. Republicans stripped whites who engaged in rebellion of the vote and gave it to blacks and earned the undying hatred of Democrats for generations. To the extent Republicans embrace social issues at all, (and we will use the liberal and Democratic understanding of "social issue" to mean social engineering and government handouts[note 18]), after opposing a proposal they then introduce their own modest scaled down version.

The question is, Why did Hillary jump parties? When John Dillinger was asked, Why do you rob banks?, his reply was, Because that's where the money is.Why did Hillary become a Democrat?Because that's where the votes are, particulary if your ambition is to marry a Senator and your boyfriend plans to run for office as a Democrat.

Hillary's own description of the one-upsmanship she played with Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primaries complete with being a conservative martyr to an unfair media.

Hillary's inner-conservatism was on full display in the 2016 primaries. At first she posed as an experienced diplomat, national security expert, and statesman (or stateswoman or statesperson or whatever). But that didn't get her anywhere, this was the Democratic party afterall and not a general election. These voters could care less about national security and world peace, their only concern being gimme gimme gimme and what's-in-it-for-me.[28] So she appealed to the center by saying economists claimed Bernie Sanders promises were crazy and would bankrupt America.[29] But that didn't gain any traction either. After the nomination, like Nixon, like Reagan,[30] like Kasich,[31] like Trump[32] and other tuff talking budget hawks before her, she was matching or trying to outdo Sanders' pie-in-the-sky rhetoric by promising hundreds of billions for student aid to prepare young adults for jobs that don't exist.[note 19]

By 1992, Hillary created the myth that she left the party because Nixon and the GOP were racist in 1968. While this fit the Democratic party talking points to attack Republicans in 1992, it had no bearing in reality in 1968. The Political Science major at the top of her class knew it was the GOP that provided the votes for passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964, her hero Barry Goldwater being one of 6 Republicans voting with 22 Democratic segregationists to oppose. As she ascended the national stage it was easier for her to deny Nixon than Goldwater.

Nixon posed as an Eisenhower-like figure ready to rescue America from another Democrat foreign war. The domestic issues of racism and civil rights, which divided the Democrats, the Democrats did to themselves. Racists rallied to the law and order platform of George Wallace, a Democrat running on a third party ticket. Republicans studiously avoided issues of race and focused on the mishandling of the Vietnam war which was at the heart of domestic discontent. The "racists" Hillary alleged at the 1968 Republican convention were Republican patriots who supported FDR, Truman, and Johnson's foreign wars against fascism and communism; by 1992 Hillary's rewrite of history was extraordinary and personally offensive to many. Particularly now, we have seen her as Senator do exactly what Republicans since the First World War have done: cast aside partisanship and crossover party lines in a spirit of patriotism to support an administration of the opposing party in a foreign war and national security emergency.

Nixon's so called 'Southern Strategy' is a rewrite of history which took it's present shape in the Clinton era. Every candidate who ever ran for president from whichever party has had a 'Southern Strategy'. FDR put John Nance Garner of Texas on the ticket to get the Southern racist vote. John Kennedy picked Lyndon Johnson for the same reason[34] (in 1960 Johnson was hardly an advocate of civil rights; no one knew him then to be a closet liberal. And by the time they did find out, he was a one term president so hated and despised in his own party he didn't bother to seek reelection). Michael Dukakis put Lloyd Bentsen of Texas on the ticket to take back the racist vote Ronald Reagan supposedly cornered the market on.

No one today thinks of Hillary Clinton as from Arkansas, or even New York. More and more we see her for who she is - a traditional conservative from the Land of Lincoln and the Party of Lincoln. Despite all the hype of putting an Hispanic on the ticket (Xavier Becerra, Tom Perez; or Julián Castro), her choice of a Virginian obviously is an appeal to traditional yankee-hating Southerners to "balance the ticket".

During Bill Clinton's presidency the term, 'triangulation', entered the political lexicon. Triangulation involves assuming the posture of a moderate, hijacking the ideas of your opponents, and selling out your political base. The Clinton's mastered the form. Be it labor unions sold-out to NAFTA and free trade, or people in poverty cut off by "ending welfare as we know it", or calling women victims of sexual assault and sexual abuse "bimbos" and "trailer park trash", or locking up African-Americans enmasse in their 1994 Crime bill.[35] In the end the Clinton's still posed as divisive figures and partisan trash-talkers, playing to the worst instincts and fears of the people they betrayed, rather than assume the leadership role of consensus builders in a common purpose.[36]

The Clinton's were incredibly divisive figures, and deliberately so. From the end of Reconstruction until Bill Clinton, Arkansas had only one Republican governor - Winthrop Rockefeller - whom it's safe to say bought his seat with his family's fortune. There was a 93 year uninterupted stretch of Democratic governors.[note 20] In Bill Clinton's final term there were only 6 GOP Senators of 35 in the upper chamber, and 15 of 100 in the Assembly. The GOP of Arkansas had no means whatsover to affect thier views or agenda, effectively non-existent. When Bill Clinton came to Washington, he had no clue what a Republican at the national level was because he never dealt with one. Hillary Rodham was probably the first Republican he met in his whole life. But none of these facts prevented him from spewing hate and division about Republicans and the Republican party, blaming them for all the social and economic ills that had befallen his beloved Arkansas and America, blaming them for even the sexual indiscretions in his own life that the media and his Democratic primary opponents were uncovering and openly speculating on. Like Donald Trump, Bill Clinton struck a responsive chord among an angry and fearful electorate scapegoating others with cheap easy answers for the problems facing America. And like Nixon in 1968, he didn't need 51% of the vote to win in a three-way contest.

The Democrats were finally united, all 42% of them, intent to show they could lead the country and the world after they tore America apart with their Vietnam war and the economic and foreign policy disasters of the Carter administration. The baby boomers finally came of age, and Hillary was one if its chief strategists in the politics of hardball. Nixon taught her well. Dirty tricks don't matter so long as you win. But Nixon's mistake was covering up the misdeeds of others - even his opponents. Herein lies the essence of Clintonism - accusing your opponents of the misdeeds you yourself are guilty of so as to neutralize criticism. Thus Gennifer Flowers became the "daughter of Willie Horton,"[note 21] invoking and manipulating the politics of racial divisiveness to cover her husband's infidelity.[38] Hillary hired plumbers to fix the "bitches" her husband was seeing,[39] causing friction in her longterm plans for the couple and herself.[40]

Upon becoming First Lady, Hillary returned to where it all began, her suburban high school in Park Ridge Illinois where her parents had white flighted to in the 1950s so that she could recieve the superb education she was now gushing about. If you're looking for a portrait of Hillary's conversion on the road to Damascus when she came out of the deep darkness of conservatism to walk in the bright warm sunshine of liberalism, you won't find it here.[41] But you will find her rugged individualism that evolved into her own views which "are not dogmatically Republican nor dogmatically Democratic." During the school's mock election, she was assigned to play Lyndon Johnson in a mock debate, forcing her to research and study views that were not her own, and developing within her a unique perspective for which she expressed gratitude to her Republican father and conservative teachers. The tolerance she learned toward other's views explains her undergraduate thesis on Saul Alinsky.[note 22][42] Hillary has always been more effective playing the demure policy wonk who "worked within the system" as the New York Times described it, than the wild-eyed radical.[43]

So why was it easier for Hillary to repudiate Nixon in 1974 when she joined the House impeachment committee staff, than to repudiate Goldwater when NPR finally asked her to explain why she didn't in 1996? The Watergate scandal is only the tip of the iceberg. The impeachment committee looked extensively at Nixon's "incursion"[note 23] into Cambodia. Goldwater had been the original non-interventionist, anti-Vietnam War candidate in 1964 with his advocacy of tactical nukes to end the conflict quickly. Johnson and Nixon, who ran as peace candidates, averaged 120 dead American service personnel per week between the two of them for ten solid years. Many Goldwater supporters felt vindicated, as there certainly were no Democrats opposed to escalating the Vietnam conflict in 1964 when Goldwater was almost alone. Some Goldwater backers had more in common with the anti-war isolationists who backed Gene McCarthy and George McGovern than the Nixon-Johnson Silent Majority war hawks.

Some thought it a war crime when Nixon expanded the war into Cambodia, and an Article of Impeachment was formulated based on this. Nixon allegedly responded, "the president can bomb whoever he wishes".[note 24] In the ensuing legal arguments the law came down on Nixon's side and the impeachment Article was defeated. The War Powers Act and two standing Congressional Intelligence Committees were born out of these legal and constitutional debates. The impeachment committee settled on lesser charges based on a third-rate burglarly to pursue their pettiness and vindictiveness. Make no mistake, Hillary's involvement with the committee, and using it to promote herself and her own career, was a big factor in bringing an impeachment inquiry against the Clinton's for their involvement in the Whitewater land deal. But legal and constitutional questions over impeacheability for the Clinton's activities prior to taking office caused the committee to settle on lesser charges based on sex in the Oval Office.

When Obama named Hillary Secretary of State, she was dubbed "The Great Right Hope". Noemie Emery explained why :

As for the conservatives, many of those who began 2008 willing to do anything to defeat her tended to end it feeling sorry she lost. They began to tell themselves and each other they would sleep better at night if she were the nominee of her party...Differences remain still with Hillary Clinton, but most of these are on social and size-of-government issues, which in her projected new post would be immaterial...foreign policy is the one area in which her ideas seem somewhat in line with those of conservatives; and at any rate, she is the best thing they are likely to get. For the moment, Hillary Clinton will be the conservatives' Woman in Washington, more attuned to their concerns on these issues than to those of the get-the-troops-home-now wing of her party...It's a long trek from vast right-wing conspiracy to Great Right Hope, but Hillary Clinton, with the help of the far left, has made it.[44]

George Shultz, who annointed Baby Bush heir of the conservative movement and the Reagan legacy over John McCain during the 2000 primaries, said “I think she could be a very good secretary of state.” Shultz prophetically warned however, that her selection after competing against Obama in a vicious campaign for the nomination might have weakened Hillary and Obama's relationship.[45] It is hard to imagine Hillary, who pursuaded Obama to betray his principles for the totally unnecessary and disasterous Libyan intervention, doing something as inane as Obama's Apology tour aimed at weakening the United States.

In the Clintons first year in office they gutted the missile defense system. In the second year when a vacancy occurred in the office of Secretary of Defense, they nominated Adm. Bobby Inman, the former head of the program (then known as High Frontier) to fill the slot. In true Clinton fashion they wanted it both ways, throwing a bone to the GOP national security estsblishment while cutting the Stars Wars program and funnelling the money into vote buying schemes. Inman, citing developments in the Whitewater investigation, declined the nomination.[46] Nevertheless, the episode was cited throughout the Clinton years as evidence of their dedication to bi-partisan cooperation and a commitment to conservative values.

The purpose of SDI (Strategic Defence Initiative, the proper name for Star Wars) was to abandon the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), in favor of Assured Survival, in any conflict with Russia. Reagan even made periodic assurances to sceptics, who claimed the program was too costly and the risks too provocative, that the technology would be shared with Russia. But in 2016, Reagan's fantasies as critics called it, are real and operational : the entire arsenal of Russian nuclear warheads can be wiped out on the ground in minutes before they launch (leaving only the sea launched systems).[47]

Kissinger Associates was originally founded by Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft in 1982. In 1999 former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Mack McLarty's consulting organization merged to form Kissinger McLarty Associates. The firms split up after Hillary's unsuccesful 2008 presidential bid, but there remains overlap between members serving with both organizations. No, these firms are not a plot to take over the world and rule the planet. These consulting firms are essentially like day-labor job search offices for unemployed foreign policy and national security experts.

Clinton administration veterans served on Dr. Kissinger's Transatlantic Alliance task force, a sort of civilian parallel of the militarily dominated NATO. Notably among them were Tom Donilon, Stu Eizenstat, and Laura D'Andrea Tyson. Donilan served as National Security Advisor for roughly the entire tenure of Hillary Clinton's stewardship at the State Department.[note 25] Eizenstat was Bill Clinton's Ambassador to the EU, among other important senior positions in the Clinton administration of the 90s. Both Donilan and Eizenstat have been variously described as neoconservative.[48][49] Laura Tyson went on to be the Dean of the London School of Business. In 2004 the task force issued a report on why the continuing need for NATO in the post Cold War era, including a recommendation that NATO must increasingly concern itself with threats emanating from outside Europe.[50] European governments, up until the War on Terror, have greeted US requests for burden sharing in Asia and Africa coolly for decades. After 9/11 the response has been mixed.

Kissinger Associates are closely associated with, and Mack McClarty was a client of the UK firm of Hakluyt. Stephan Halper and Alexander Downer, who set up and compromised Trump coffee boy George Papadopoulos to rig a counterintelligence investigation on team Trump, were members of Hakluyt's Advisory Board.[51]

The Scowcroft Group, a firm similiar to
McLarty and Kissinger's group where he still remains active, also had on its board of directors Bob Strauss. Strauss rebuilt the Democratic party in the 1970s as DNC Chairman after McGovern's defeat. Strauss managed the 1976 Democratic convention which nominated Jimmy Carter. When Carter was elected Scowcroft was out of a job.

Scowcroft returned as National Security Adviser to Papa Bush in 1989. Papa Bush appointed Bob Strauss Ambassador to the Soviet Union, which in short order made Strauss the first US Ambassador to the Russian Federation, setting an example to the infant democracy how a two-party system and bipartisanship work. In 1992 when the Clintons took the White House, Scowcroft was again out of a job. Scowcroft and Papa Bush then collaborated on a book about the end of the Cold War entitled, A World Transformed, an obvious take-off of Kissinger's Metternich book, A World Restored.

Scowcroft is no neocon. He was vocal in his criticism of Baby Bush, Hillary Clinton, and the other neocons of what they did and were doing in Iraq.[52] By 2015 Hillary bowed to Scowcroft's superior wisdom on the issue,[53] and Scowcroft has become an enthusiastic supporter for Hillary among GOP establishment types.[54]

Scowcroft is the guy photographed toasting the butchers of the Tiananmen Square massacre just days later. The Chinese government killed at least 2300 of its own people and many survivors sent to the Chinese gulag. Scowcroft flew to Beijing to assure them trade agreements would remain in place (e.g, selling cheap Chinese made consumer goods at Walmart where Hillary Clinton sat on the board of directors) and there would be no sanctions.[55] There has not been any similiar mass pro-democracy movements in China since for nearly 30 years now.

George H.W. Bush (Papa Bush) was the 41st president of the United States ignominiously defeated for reelection by a violent sex addict and pervert, Bill Clinton. But the two shared much in common. Both were Yalies. Both were veterans of the CIA.

Bush was involved in Operation Mongoose in the early and mid 1960s. Immediately after the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, John Kennedy set about his own covert operation to remove Castro and the communists from power, this time with more determination than he showed at the Bay of Pigs. Bush took part in the training and equiping of Cuban refugees for another planned assault on Cuba, which never materialized. 10 years later Bush headed the Agency.

Bill Clinton was recruited into the CIA in 1969 after he was booted out of Oxford and the Rhodes Scholarship program. He lost his deferment and was drafted.[56] Through his political patron, Sen, J. William Fulbright, he was able to perform the two years active duty he owed the country in the CIA rather than military. He spent the two years as a snitch on European anti-Vietnam war movements. Nixon was convinced European movements were organized from Moscow and ordered the CIA to get the evidence. Bill Clinton was quite the catch for the US government; its not everyday you can scoop up a Rhodes Scholar as a conscript. Affirmative action allowed a few African Americans to escape the draft, as whites regularly did, but far too many conscripts out of proportion to their numbers were black high school drop outs. Po'boy Clinton was just another example of white privilege. In his mysterious trip to Moscow, who knows, he may have been the courier for Nikita Khruschev's memoirs which were smuggled out of Russia and translated by his Oxford roommate, Strobe Talbot, and published in the West by the CIA.

CIA is like the Marines. Once a CIA man always a CIA man.[note 26] There is a common bond among veterans. Both were involved in Iran-Contra. Clinton through his Stephens family connections with the BCCI money laundering scheme and the Mena Arkansas airstrip which was continuing an anti-communist South American gun-running scheme, much like Operation Mongoose 20 years earlier.[58][59] Bush was involved on the Ollie North and Iran side of the equation.

Now some object to the notion the CIA is/was involved in international drug trafficing as the stuff of conspiracy theorists. However the idea is not new. In fact, a wholly government supported foreign intelligence bureau is a uniquely American idea. In an open society with a free press and government transparancy, a foreign intelligence service would have to be pretty stupid to not read the budget of the United States government and not see exactly what programs are the CIA's priorities. The KGB, Mossad, German intelligence, as well as China and Japan, all were founded and continue to be subsidized with private external sources of revenue. Throughout the 1980s, drug legalization was a national debate personified by Bill Buckley advocating consumer choice and a free market, and Charlie Rangel advocating totalitarian control with universal healthcare for methadone addicts. In popular culture, Director Brian de Palma's two most famous films, Scarface and The Untouchables propounded the notion prohibition only made gangsters rich.[note 27] One of Papa Bush's first acts was to implement seizure laws, "taking the profit out of drug trafficing", i.e. taking the profit out for everybody except the government. Seizure laws are an admission the War on Drugs is a failure; it's not worth law enforcements time and effort to interdict drug traffic until after narcotics are imported, distributed, and consumed. Then you go after the profits.

The personal bond between the Clintons and the Bushes developed when Bill Clinton thwarted an assassination attempt on George H.W. Bush's life in 1993. Having been in that position as president, Papa Bush knew better than anybody Clinton didn't have to do it. He could have ignored the intelligence and let it happen. Now Clinton owns Bush. The two looted donors to the Haitian earthquake relief fund together.[60]

Papa Bush has remained tight lipped, in his words, "what I really think" about Bill Clinton's sexual deviancy and unethical conduct, which other former president's have broken custom to openly criticized. Now Papa Bush looks at Clinton like the son he never had. And in a strange way, Clinton looks at Papa Bush like the father he never had.

“aligning themselves with Hillary Rodham Clinton and her nascent presidential campaign, in a bid to return to the driver’s seat of American foreign policy....[her policies are] something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that. They are going to call it something else.”

In November 2015, Gen. McCrystal in Defense One was already praising Hillary Clinton's strategy to defeat Daesh.[61] By March 2016 GOP national security experts were openly criticizing Trump.[62]

The Cairo Review noted in early 2016

"Despite Hillary Clinton’s reputation as a liberal, the record suggests her presidency would push America toward a more militaristic approach to the Middle East...From Afghanistan to Western Sahara, she has advocated for military solutions to complex political problems, backed authoritarian allies and occupying armies, dismissed war crimes, and opposed political involvement by the United Nations and its agencies.... she made a concerted effort to distance herself from Obama’s Middle East policies, which—despite including the bombing of no less than seven countries in the greater region—she argues have not been aggressive enough.... a look at the positions she has taken on a number of the key Middle East policy issues suggest that her presidency would shift America to a still more militaristic and interventionist policy that further marginalizes concerns for human rights or international law." [63]

The problems in NATO are immense. Of course nobody wants to talk about it in an open society cause our enemies are listening. Loose lips sink ships. A younger generation struggles to understand what NATO is and why it exists.[64] NATO struggles to understand what it is and why it exists.[65] A once sacrosanct institution in very recent memory has lent itself to the most appalling abuse, acting as a mercenary, diametrically inverse to its foundational mission, and by its own action did everything it was created to oppose.

The Libyan intervention was a colonial adventure.[66][67][68][69][70] It wasn't even done by NATO, NATO only lent its name to give cover to the abusing member's domestic constituents. Founded on the principle that an attack on one is an attack against all, a seemingly clear statement of its mission to defend, 12 of its 28 members hired themselves out to private interests to attack a third world dictatorship, in order to plunder its gold reserves and create commercial opportunities for its participating members' own corporate interests. Things haven't worked out quite as envisioned, thus far.

NATO’s members represent more than half of world GDP. Military alliances are created to defend economic and political alliances.[note 28] How was Libya under Gaddafi a threat to NATO and the West as Libya sought to throw off the vestiges of colonialism, assume responsibility for itself, and compete in the international trading system - the program the West and Nato have encouraged for more than half a century? A dangerous precedent has been set with this policy alteration unless Nato can repent of this error, do a midcourse correction and clarify its purpose for the citizens of its member states who must absorb and carry the cost.

Nato was not founded as the world's policeman,[71] that is a role the United States assigned to itself when it assumed responsibilities formerly held by the British Empire. The United States has been asking Nato members for assistance in this role since the Vietnam war. The speech former Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird credits a 20 year old intern named Hillary Clinton with assisting him addressed specifically this subject, burden sharing.

It was a speech in how we were robbing from NATO - taking things from all over the world - from our military forces, and diverting it to Vietnam. Preparedness in NATO was going down the drain.

Neither was NATO founded as the world's humanitarian relief organization.[72] Nato members have increasingly portrayed to their publics NATO as a military adjunct of the United Nations, ignoring the tri-polar balance of the United Nations Security Council. Phrases such as "UN authorization of Nato" have become unquestionably commonplace; imagine the average Brit, American, or Frenchman waking to hear, "The UN authorized the Chinese military..."; they would shit their draws.

The truth is, NATO is a freak of nature that grew out of FDR's failed Grand Design to establish the United Nations as a perpetual entity to keep the peace after his death.[73] The United Nations was an effort to institutionalize a permanent military and diplomatic alliance among the Allied Powers that defeated the Axis Powers. That vision never took shape. So during the Berlin Crisis of 1948, the Atlantic Charter was resuscitated[74] as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. After the Korean War the UN was casterated of any pretense as a military alliance and became a debating forum (not even a referee) in a bi-polar world for those willing to participate.

Ironically Vladimir Putin today wants to accept the deal FDR offered but Stalin rejected after 1945. Hence two organizations of FDR's Grand Design simultaneouly came into existance, NATO and the UN, one having a little more muscle. Russia was refused entry into NATO after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact,[75] so hardened were the attitudes created by the Cold War among NATO member states, and resigned to a bi-polar world of hostile competing interests.

The communist bloc in 1980

But even by 1992 it was nolonger a bi-polar world, it was a tri-polar world. The US was slow to recognize the Sino-Soviet split of 1962[note 29] and kept up the myth of the communist monolith throughout the Vietnam war. In negotiation with Alexei Kosygin, Henry Kissinger was captured off guard when Kosygin asked, 'who would the United States support in a war between Russia and China?' Suddenly it all made sense. The Soviet Union maintained a large and costly standing military in peacetime, not to threaten NATO and Europe, but because of Russian fear of China.[note 30]

Had NATO accepted Russia along with Poland, Hungary, and the territitories of the former East German state, NATO groupthink reasoned, it would be a return to a bi-polar world with NATO on one end, and China on the other. NATO didn't want to add any leverage to Russia in its disputes with China, and with the free trade movements and democratization underway worldwide, NATO did not wish to appear threatening to China during the infant stages of its growth as a global economic power. But Russia had other reasons for seeking allies NATO and the West were slow to comprehend: the foreign jihad they just lost in Afghanistan and the growing jihad within its new borders.[note 31]

So FDR's vision of cooperation between allies was thwarted once again, even after an adversary (who was a former ally) threw in the towel. Institutionalized competetion in the military sphere became the mainstay to justify Nato's continued existence against an enemy that no longer existed.[76] Members had simply invested too much for too long. The Soviet successor state, the Russian Federation, would have to play the role of foil or bogeyman, whether it wanted to or not.

In the Putin era Russia has gone through a period of defense modernization. Its entrance into the global trading system and rise as a major exporter of oil and natural gas provided the revenues to allow this to happen. Initially in the 1990s, this was viewed as not such a bad thing. It provided opportunies for Exxon, America's largest corporation, to explore reserves and upgrade infrastructure.[note 32][77][78] Sale of natural gas to Europe was considered a stepping stone to European economic integration. And Russian crude oil exports hopefully would make the West and Japan less dependent on the volitile Middle East and Saudi Arabia.

Russia has also revised its strategic doctrine, now with an emphasis on the use of smaller, more mobile Special Operations Forces (Spetznaz) along the US and Nato model. While the Chechen jihads of the 1990s allowed for experience in asymetrical warfare against an enemy with small arms or captured Russian equipment, the Syrian War has provided the opportunity for live fire combat testing against NATO equipment and other foreign producers. This has been noteworthy in the use of radar, surface-to-air missiles, and NATO's internal debate over creating a no-fly zone.

The multi-billion dollar missile defense system was started by Reagan, dubbed by opponents 'Star Wars', a futuristic fantasy.[note 33] Bill Clinton cut the program and wouldn't deploy the initial prototype. Baby Bush revived it, and in 2007 the Iron Dome system was deployed to Israel. Russia had been supportive of America's War on Terror, but as the Russo-Georgian War heated up, NATO allies in Europe, particularly those involved in the Partners for Peace program (former Warsaw Pact members), expressed a desire to have missile defense systems based on their territory. Talk was of a reignited Cold War, for which Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama blamed George W. Bush.[80]

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama opposed deployment of the missile defense system and condemned the anti-Putin stance of Secretary of State Condolezza Rice who was regarded as a feministUncle Tom. In office, Obama promptly cancelled the missile defense program and Hillary hit the Reset button on deteriorating US-Russian relations - at least until the Rosatom-Uranium One deal was completed. Then reality set in. Obama started sounding like George W. Bush and Hillary like Condi Rice, the two people they heaped scorn on a few years earlier. In 2016 the two redirected their scorn at Donald Trump, as Trump's rhetoric about Putin and criticism of incumbants sounded like a mimeographed speech of either Hillary or Obama in the 2008 Democratic primaries.

Putin warned that the Russians do not view the missile defense system as a defensive system - at all.[81] The system has the capability of a first strike launch to destroy the entire Russian land based nuclear arsenal when it's based on Russia's borders. Deployment would be provocative. President Obama, after decades of trashing Ronald Reagan as a wreckless nuclear war hawk for his Star Wars fantasy and Baby Bush for reigniting the Cold War, ignored Putin's warning and deployed the missile defense system in Romania.[82] This was done, the administration said, to guard against Iranian nukes, despite the fact Obama said it would be at least 13 years before Iran had a nuke in the recently completed Iran nuke deal. Putin responded by stationing Iskander missiles (SS-26s in NATO nomenclature) in Kaliningrad. Flight time of this nuclear tipped warhead is two minutes to Warsaw, leaving NATO functionally with no warning.[83]

Let's focus on some of the Clinton record vis-a-vis NATO, nuclear proliferation, and other issues related to peace and stability.

Another supreme moment: Hillary answers questions about her private email server in 2015. When has it ever been known, in the entire history of the United Nations, that the UN would allow a private citizen (Hillary was no longer Sec. of State) to use their backdrop and press gallery to answer questions about a domestic scandal and criminal investigation of a person serving in no official capacity, and business unrelated, to the UN?

In the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, the Clinton administration gave security assurances of the territorial integrity of Ukraine in exchange for Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapons. The agreement was violated when Russia annexed portions of the Ukraine (Crimea) in 2014.[note 34] The Obama administration failed to honor its commitments and responded with a few paltry sanctions on Russian political bosses.[note 35]

Beginning in 1994, the Clinton administration paid North Korea $4 billion to not build a nuclear bomb;[84] in 2002 North Korea admitted it violated the agreement. [85] After witnessing Gaddafi's betrayal and murder[86] North Korea vows it will never give up its nukes.[87]

In 2011, for the first time, the United States allowed European leaders to drag the United States into a war during the Libyan domestic conflict. Only 12 of NATOs 28 members participated. Vladimir Putin accused the coalition of violating the UN Security Council Resolution authorizing assistance. DAESH has declared portions of Libya a province of the Islamic State and it has become a major drop off point contributing to the European refugee crisis.

The Syrian mess, originally concieved as a counter to Iranian ambitions, will be remembered as President Obama and Hillary's greatest failure. It has resulted in strengthening the hands of both Putin and Assad, lifting Iranian sanctions and acquiesence to Iranian nuclear ambitions, the birth of the Islamic State and 6 million refugees flooding Europe.

A cynic may argue ISIS is armed by the CIA through Saudi Arabia as a front to counter Iranian ambitions, similiar to how Reagan armed Iran through Israel to counter Saddam's army during Iran-Contra. The strategy being, to get Muslims killing each other again rather than Westerners or Jews, a return to the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld neocon policy.

It's been a slow learning curve for Hillary Clinton in the field of international power politics; nevertheless dating back to her Goldwater-girl days when she rallied to the call, "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice"[note 36] or her work for Nixon's Defense Secretary, the policy wonk at least has been a student and involved in affairs, mistakes and all. Donald Trump by contrast, seems to be as ignorant as a typical Democratic voter in these matters.

At the 2016 Democratic nominating convention it was patently obvious to all observers Hillary intended a different approach to Syria and Bashar al Assad than the Obama administration practiced for 5 years. Which in turn means a different approach to the Iranian-Russian alliance. Her presumptive Defense Secretary Michele Flournoy and the Democratic heavyweight utilityman Leon Panetta, famous for criticizing Obama whom he served in several key positions, said as much. But the debate focuses more importantly on the future role of NATO, and less importantly on defeating ISIS.

In a 2012 debate Barack Obama mocked Mitt Romney for taking the view now espoused by Hillary Clinton, and before that Conolezza Rice,[89]John McCain, Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon,[90] and Ronald Reagan. Obama chided, "The 1980s are calling. They want their foreign policy back," when Russia was the focus of US foreign policy and NATO existed solely to defend Europe from Russian (or Soviet) encroachment. By the end of Obama's second term however, Obama and cohorts were pretending to be as rabid Russophobes as, literally, Joseph McCarthy.[91]

Nixon, Obama in Libya,[92] Baby Bush,[93] and Hillary Clinton[note 37] have all advocated an expanded role for NATO which the key European powers generally have been reluctant to embrace.[note 38] Putin would like to see a united front against the jihad, but the issues of NATO swallowing up Russia's former allies and client states and deployment of missile defense Star Wars technology on Russian borders have gotten in the way.

Hillary is an advocate of Nixon's Madman theory. In 2008 when Obama made a declaration not to use nuclear weapons, recalling Leonid Brezhnev's no first strike pledge popular with the nuclear freeze movement of the 1980s,[95][note 39] Hillary responded with her famous red telephone TV ad and a public statement :

I don't believe that any president should make any blanket statements with respect to the use or nonuse of nuclear weapons.

Nixon thumbnailed the Madman theory in the The Real War :

You should never let the enemy know what you will do, but it's more important that you never let the enemy know what you will not do... statements that appear to rule out the use of force, while perhaps meant to be unprovocative, will in fact provoke an antagonist to push for more. ...we should not make statements that we will never launch a preemptive strike. Whether or not we would ever exercise that option, we should always leave open the possibility that in extreme circumstances we might.[97]

And in resigning the office Nixon advised future presidents,

Always be prepared to do the thing you never imagined you would do,

be it going to China, nuking an adversary, or resigning from office.

Hillary broke her own leadership code two months earlier when she made clear her support of the madman theory with this quote:

I want the Iranians to know that if I’m president, we will attack Iran. In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.”[98]

The missile defense system deployed on Russian borders keeps up the appearance of a tri-polar world, but in reality, turns the Russian Federation into a Vassal state of the West. This is a role that Vladimir Putin as the leader of his country may not be willing to accept. Putin has already begun preparing Russian defense experts and the Russia citizenry saying, "If it's Hillary, it's war."

↑The Republican party was the party of civil rights. It was a Republican Chief Justice who wrote the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision and a Republican president who sent troops to Little Rock to enforce it.

↑In 1993 Clinton ordered the firing of all 94 career US Attorneys, a move unprecedented in American history. They were replaced with Clinton cronies.

↑Friedrich Engels said Metternich hated to hear the clock tick because it meant change.

↑An object lesson in foreign policy: Truman had a very public disagreement with Gen. MacArthur over the threat or use of nuclear weapons to end the Korean War, was unwilling to use them after he nuked Japan, and didn't know how to end the bloodshed as the war he committed US troops to dragged on. In Eisenhower's first 100 days, this scaled down device was tested and this photograph, which was classified to the American public, was circulated among Russian, Chinese, and North Korean officials. The fighting was brought to a swift conclusion. The lesson: nukes don't have to be used, but the threat of using nukes has to be real.

↑It's worth briefly outlining the significance of this. Kissinger headed a task force to find and propose an alternative to Eisenhower's policy of massive retaliation in the event of a Soviet strike. Kissinger's task force and the book they published became the Democratic party's alternative to Eisenhower's strategy. By 1954 the Davy Crockett (nuclear device), a nuclear artillery shell with a low level charge and launcher light enough to carry on a paratrooper's back, was operational. The concept of limited nuclear war was born. And so was the idea the US could take risks in regional conflicts like Vietnam without the fear of nuclear Armageddon. When Nixon brought on Dr. Kissinger in 1969, it was not only a break with the nuclear policies advocated by Eisenhower and Goldwater, it was a bow to the Democrats's chief theoritician and strategist who had made the Vietnam war possible. Some even viewed Kissinger's appointment as Nixon pursuing a bipartisan solution (See Phyllis Schlafly, Kissinger on the Couch for instance. Schlafly considers Kissinger as continuing the same disasterous policies of Robert McNamara). Since no one else seemed to know what to do about Vietnam, Kissinger and Nixon used the crisis to advance their secret plan to end the Cold War and bring about a new era in diplomacy.

↑Nixon had a deep abiding mistrust of the State Department going back to the Acheson era. Nixon felt the institution was rife with incompetence, leakers, KGB agents, and "faggots in striped pants". Like FDR, Nixon and Kissinger controlled foreign policy tightly within the White House, and kept the State Department in the dark.

↑The secret plan to end the series of unwinnable wars began with Détente, an easing of tensions. Detente was thrown out the window with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. President Carter, playing to the progressive element within his party, sought to distance himself from the policies of Nixon and Kissinger. A series of conflicting signals from the Carter administration led the Soviet Politburo to conclude invading Afghanistan was an acceptable risk. President Carter was moreless bitch-slapped by his advisors into recognizing the mistake he had made, and he immediately responded with the Carter Doctrine, essentially re-dedicating himself publicly to the foreign policies of FDR and Nixon, and every president in between, and commiting the US to the same for another generation. Carter learned his lesson the hard way, trying to game the system and score brownie points within the Democratic party by trash-talking Nixon & Kissinger. But the damage was done: the US lost a vital ally in Iran which has been hostile since and now dangerously pursues nuclear weapons, the Cold War persisted with a fresh series of hot wars for another decade, and 2 million Afghans died in an unnecessary war.

↑Nixon's secret plan was billed in the 1968 campaign as a secret plan to end the Vietnam war. The plan was revealed with the appointment of Dr. Kissinger. It's over-ambitious details, to end the Cold War and the underlying causes that drove the US into a series of unwinnable hot wars, could not be completed in one president's term of office. Nevertheless, the broad outlines of incentives for Soviet cooperation, such as IMF membership or access to World Bank loans, were spelled out. De-commissioning of small scale tactical nukes as a first step was completed by 1971. There were bumps in the road along the way, but when the Soviet Union did collapse in 1992, much of the contingencies were scripted out in Kissinger's negotiations in the 1970s. Not forseen or discussed was the role of NATO in a post-Soviet world. What would be the role, or reason for existence, of a military alliance founded solely to counter the Soviet threat after the Soviet Union passed away peaceably?

↑As anti-war and civil rights riots, and political assassinations, plagued American streets, Czechs were protesting for "socialism with a human face". The contrast was stark: Americans were exercising their constitutional freedoms while protesters in Prague were crushed by Russian tanks. This afterall was why Americans were fighting communism in Vietnam, supposedly. The foreign policy basis of the Truman Doctrine leading the US into Vietnam was based upon the failure of Appeasement of a totalitarianaggressor who invaded Czechoslovakia in 1938; in 1968 when the Soviet Union did the same damn thing the United States did not lift a finger.

↑Why Vietnam? The answer is threefold. (1) The ruling Democrat party was firmly convinced in a corrupted version of Keysianism and the draft as the only way to maintain full employment. (2) Defense and intelligence experts were tired of Soviet bellyaching about hardships the Soviets endured for 4 years under Nazi occupation and criticism the United States was soft and it's role exaggerated in WWII. They wanted to prove the US could have 'guns and butter' simultaneously over an extended period of time. (3) Vietnam was a live-fire proving ground for weapons development and the so-called 'vertical envelopment' theory.

↑Democratic presidents have always given more than a passing nod to Republican expertise in the field of national security and defense. Throughout World War II, both FDR's Sec. of War Henry L. Stimson and Sec. of Navy Frank Knox were Republicans. The two positions and departments were combined into a new Defense Department in 1947. Republicans Wendell Wilkie and Harold Stassen were instrumental in the war effort and implementing FDR's Grand Design for the post-war order, the United Nations. Sen. Arthur Vandenberg worked closely eith FDR and Truman to make the UN reality. Former Nixon-Ford Defense Secretary James Schlesinger became the first head of the newly created Department of Energy under Jimmy Carter, relieving the Pentagon of the problem of production and disposal of nuclear materials. Winston Lord, who accompanied Kissinger on his secret advance trip to China to arrange Nixon's visit, was the highest ranking Republican in Bill Clinton's State Dept. Maine Sen. Bill Cohen was Bill Clinton's Defense Secretary. Bill Gates and Chuck Hegel have served in that same capacity for President Obama. The counterterrorism task force that located Osama bin Laden were Bush holdovers, including John Brennan who went on to head the CIA.

↑Who lost China? Truman went through four Secretary's of State in four years, such was the disarray FDR left American foreign policy in. Acheson took over the same month Mao come to power. But that didn't stop Joe McCarthy from calling Acheson a communist anyway. And it didn't help Acheson's case when he said "Alger Hiss is still my friend", after Hiss was convicted and sent to prison. Sympathy for her roommate's family likely had some inluence in fostering an anti-Nixon sentiment within Hillary.

↑By 1982 the Democratic National Committee had come to this same conclusion when it implemented, as a "counter-reform measure", the institution of perpetual unelected Superdelegates to headoff an insurgent movement or insurgent candidate.

↑The alternative interpretation to Hillary's "proud to be a Goldwater-girl" comment would be the supposition that social policy and civil rights were the overriding issue among the electorate in 1964, and follows the false notion that Hillary and Goldwater were arch-segregationists.

↑Public Service Ads used to run saying, "Get a good job, get a good education". Then came an explosion of government compassion and handouts in the form of increased student loans. Then, in the bait and switch arrangement, students graduated only to find their jobs shipped overseas as the result of government negotiated trade agreements or the US economy's inability to create new jobs bankrupted by government mandated entitlement programs. Recent graduates found themselves serfs to the IRS with no way to repay the debt delivering pizzas.[33] What's the way to reform the crisis? Increase capital formation to create new jobs? Nah. As Bernie Sanders proposed, and Hillary adopted, increase public treasury debt so that all children can go to college to graduate and find no jobs. But hey, who cares? The kids are too young and stupid to see how their being manipulated to buy their vote now, and by the time Hillary & Sanders pass on to the great beyond, the lingering national debt will be their problem to sucker with sweet rhetoric and pass on to the next generation.

↑From Reconstruction until Clinton, Arkansas was run by a klanish mafia. The Clintons biographer Roger Morris, author of Partner's in Power, reveals that uncle Raymond "Buddy" Clinton was the dominant male figure in young Bill Clinton's life. Buddy owned a Buick dealership and was involved in the Ku Klux Klan and organized crime, and was a potent political force who bankrolled Bill's 1974 Congressional bid. When Clinton met the Stephens family Bill became the amalgamation of the Arkansas mafia and big money. The Stephens family of Arkansas is one of the six richest families in America, involved in natural gas, highway bonds, and Wall Street brokerage. Alltel, the cellular phone giant for example, is one of a myriad of sideline businesses the family started.[37]J. William Fulbright was their man in Washington and Clinton's mentor. Fulbright hand selected Clinton as his successor to look after Arkansas interests.

↑The contrast is, the story of Willie Horton the Superpredator rapist and murderer was true in its entirety; the "daughter of Willie Horton" was a lie Hillary knew to be a lie solely intended to smear, falsely, the Republican party as racist and inflame blacks with a lie.

↑The only Alinsky precept she incorporated into her belief system was the politics of demonization.

↑"incursion" is a better word for crossing a sovereign border than "aggression" which violates the UN Charter.

↑"They can't impeach me for bombing Cambodia. The president can bomb anybody he likes." Quote attributed to Oliver Stone, but not found in the Nixon tapes or anywhere else in the extensive record.

↑The National Security Adviser, who works in the White House, often serves as the go-between or link between the President and the Secretary of State. It's up to each president whom they will grant more power. IOW, who will be whose boss. If the Secretary is granted full power, the Secretary reports back to the White House, through the National Security Adviser, on snap decisions the Secretary made on the spot abroad that the Secretary committed the President to. The National Security Adviser is only a messenger boy from the Secretary to the President, as the Secretary is always too busy traveling abroad.
If the National Security Adviser is in a policymaking role, he/she outranks the Secretary and dictates instructions on decisions made at the White House. In this scenario (as Nixon/Kissinger, Carter/Brezinski, and Trump/Mike Flynn structured it), the National Security Adviser is the Policymaker, and the Secretary is only an Administator tasked to carry out decisions made by others.

↑The only reason the US remains engaged in Afghanistan today is because if the US leaves, either the Russians or the Taliban and its jihadi affiliates will take over the unstoppable, multi-billion dollar international heroin trade. Such an event would cost the US more. By denying enemies who seek to do harm a source of revenue (mostly from European & American citizens who pay the highest street prices), is the only way to 'win' the War on Drugs.

↑NATO was founded, roughly, on the Peloponnesian League model; numerous other Western alliances have appeared in the interim of history on this same model.

↑Recent scholarship attributes the Sino-Soviet split having occurred due to the Cuban Missile Crisis where the world communist movement, under Moscow leadership, was wrecklessly dragged into a near nuclear confrontation.

↑When Kosygin met with Mao in an effort to patch up their differences Mao was adament, "The debate with Russia and China will go on for 10,000 years." Kosygin taken aback argued surely not, after all Mao and Kosygin were talking. Mao credited him, "Alright, because Kosygin is my friend, I'll knock off 1000 years. But the debate between Russia and China will go on for 9000 years."

↑According to Wikipedia, at the 1985 Reykjavík Summit "[Reagan] also promised to share SDI technology, a promise which Gorbachev said he doubted would be fulfilled, as the Americans would not even share oil-drilling technology." Russia lagged behind with 1930s-style oil drilling infrastructure because of its overemphasis on defense spending in its command-and-control economy. Within a decade, after the Berlin Wall came down and Reagan's demands were met, the US was sharing oil drilling technology with Russia. Rex Tillerson negotiated the deal with Vladimir Putin.

↑In a bit of shadenfreude Mondale himself rarely used the term 'Star Wars'. At a time religious believers were coming under increasing attack for their political views, Mondale preferred to campaign against "war in the heavens."[79]

↑The original position of the U.S. State Department outlined in Papa Bush's Chicken Kiev speech written by Condolezza Rice was that Ukraine should remain in the Russian Federation.

↑The comparison to this is the assurances of Poland's territorial integrity given in the Versailles Treaty by Great Britain and France. Should Poland be attacked, Great Britain and France would be there 'johnny-on-the-spot' to defend her. When Poland was attacked in 1939, Great Britain and France sat on their asses for six months (the Sitzkrieg or 'Phony War'). When they finally did rise to defend their paper commitments, France wound up under German occupation and Britain was bombed to smithereens.

↑Goldwater was basically talking about the use, or threat of using tactical nuclear weapons against the North Vietnamese (in much the same fashion apologists for Truman claim Hiroshima was nuked "to save American servicemen's lives") rather than an escalation of boots on the ground in a prolonged conventional war, which is the coarse Lyndon Johnson followed.

↑While Hillary Clinton has not discussed burden sharing on a global scale, as Secretary of State Hillary was the prime advocate for the US to follow the European intervention in Africa to remove Gaddafi, and persuaded Obama to do so. Former Defense Secretary Bob Gates said Hillary needs to "speak beyond generalities about how she would deal with China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, the Middle East — and international trade. Whether and how she addresses these issues will, I believe, affect how many people vote — including me.” [94]

↑Editor's note: An important clarification must be made here which unfortunately has led to some confusion. "Expanded role" for NATO means the US request to European powers for assistance outside its focus on Eastern Europe; "NATO expansion" refers to bringing Poland, Hungary, the Baltic states and others into NATO. Some publications use the phrase "NATO expansion" which is threatening to the Russian Federation when in fact Putin is in line with the position of the United States that European powers should adopt an "expanded role" for NATO outside Eastern Europe in an alliance focused on the global jihad. The reader should be aware some writers recklessly refer to "expanded role" as "NATO expansion" when discussing budgets or operations in Africa and Asia. "NATO expansion" or "NATO enlargement" should specifically refer to former Warsaw Pact members or Russian Federation states joining NATO.

↑Obama repeated the pledge in his waning days as if Obama were revisiting his pacifist childhood dreams in the nuclear freeze movement.[96] This can been seen as a verbal offset to Putin's concerns in advance of the missile shield deployment in Romania.The issue of first strike and the ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile) Treaty are revealing. The ABM treaty allowed for each side to build one ABM system, a precursor of Star Wars with the ability to shoot down incoming nuclear warheads. Russia built its system to defend Moscow, meaning Soviet leaders would survive but the rest of the country would be incinerated. The US built its system to protect its main nuclear launch facility in Grand Forks, North Dakota, a fairly clear indication the United States had no intention of first strike.Over time however, technology and politics changed, especially Soviet actions around the world.On the issue of MIRVs - Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicles - a technology built that allows one rocket to launch that then splits into several nuclear warheads each with its own guidance system to hit an array of targets. Both the ABM and Stars Wars systems are built to defend against this offensive capability. When Nixon met with Brezhnev in the Kremlin in 1972, Brezhnev offered Nixon a cigarette from a cigarette holder on his desk that looked like a miniature Top Secret MIRV capsule then under design by the United States. Brezhnev took off the lid and offered Nixon one of 10 cigarettes in the holder, meaning the Soviets could duplicate US technology by espionage without engaging in expensive research. When Reagan offered to share Star Wars technology, it was a foregone conclusion any technological edge the US tried to obtain ultimately ends up in the hands of adversaries.

↑In a passing but not irrelevant point, serious students ought to become familiar with Arnold J. Toynbee's subchapter, The Suicidalness of Militarism as evidence of a breakdown of civilizations from his massive, A Study of History.